Product Spotlight: Data Auditing and Assurance

Through automated and user-audited processes of utility invoices and energy data, we help you maintain the highest quality of data, boosting transparency and trust, and ensuring that you are prepared for external assurance. Our platform conducts pre and post-ingestion auditing utilizing a machine learning proprietary ingestion engine to process new or unrecognized line items. WatchWire also allows customizable user auditing of data in the platform. As a final measure, Customer Success Teams are also available to help flag anomalies and correct data issues. 

By auditing data upon ingestion and mapping all line items to specific components, we can guarantee the accuracy of your data. This ensures you have a comprehensive and coherent view of your energy usage and sustainability efforts. WatchWire integrates all data, alerting you if any bills or invoices are missing and ensuring data is coherent based on historical observations, flagging any invoices that exceed set thresholds.

How it works 

Automated Data Validation Process:

WatchWire is one of the only solutions in the market that runs data through a proprietary ingestion engine before populating it into the platform. This pre-ingestion auditing process enhances data quality, prevents data corruption, and identifies common import issues such as billing period gaps, duplicate billing periods, and overlapping billing periods.

User Auditing:

Within the invoice management capabilities of the platform, WatchWire performs 20 statistical audits against both usage and costs to discover anomalies in the data month over month, year over year, etc. When anomalies are detected, defined users in your organization will be alerted for further investigation. Admins also have permission to manage audits within the settings, turning them on/off or editing an audit’s variance threshold.

Invoice Reviewing and Auditing:

WatchWire automatically acquires utility invoices, categorizing every line item into respective component buckets – consumption, demand, flat charges, taxes, and miscellaneous fees.  The platform then statistically audits these invoices as they are integrated, alerting your team of any anomalies and investigating missing bills. The audited utility data can be leveraged to streamline utility bill payments by integrating with your accounts payable software or to ensure the accuracy of baseline data for analysis and KPI tracking within other modules of the platform.

How to find audits and review invoices in the platform: 

To review an invoice within the invoice management module, click on the invoice month to review – both supply and delivery will be available for viewing. Here you can view audits as the system automatically audits each invoice when processed, and will determine if the invoice passes the variances. Audits for both Delivery and Supply can be verified, just toggle between the two on the upper right-hand side.

• green: passed audits
• yellow: failed but approved
• red: failed audits
• eyeball: reviewed by someone in the organization
• blue question mark: estimated
• person icon: if the invoice failed automated audit(s) –> sent to Waiting to Verify –> then our analyst approves the invoice before it’s populated in WatchWire.

Use Cases

Sustainability Managers: This feature provides automated data, high-quality data validation, and seamless data integration, which are essential for effective sustainability management in any organization, including in putting together corporate sustainability reports. 

Energy Manager/Procurement: WatchWire’s data auditing feature is crucial for conducting energy audits, developing energy-saving strategies, and managing utility budgets by detecting anomalies. 

Accounting/Finance: This feature helps maintain meticulous records of outstanding payables, ensures the accuracy of financial documents for payment, auditing, and tax purposes, and streamlines the process of posting business transactions and processing invoices. Being able to automatically identify utility billing errors such as incorrect taxes, closed accounts, and overlapping charges ensures that your organization avoids unnecessary costs and maintains accurate records.

Importance

In an era where data is key to driving sustainable strategies and remaining in compliance with the growing body of sustainability disclosure mandates and local laws, the accuracy and reliability of that data are critical. WatchWire’s data audit features are unique due to the full coverage of data in pre and post-ingestion, as well as the ability to make user edits and checks within the platform. Backing your organization’s sustainability efforts with high-quality, audited data, is no longer a nice to have as we see a growing number of businesses be implicated in high-profile greenwashing claims and litigation. Climate-related and ESG disclosure regulations on the horizon as well as recommendations from popular voluntary sustainability reporting frameworks are increasing the need for external assurance and verification of emissions and energy data. While assurance is not yet required in many cases, it is not an unreasonable assumption to think that it might be in the near future even if it is limited assurance. Carefully audited utility, energy, and emissions baseline data is key to future-proofing your organization and guaranteeing a smooth process when it comes to getting the exported data and reports externally verified by consultants. 

Ultimately, audited data yields accurate data, which not only increases transparency to investors and stakeholders but also ensures you’re making data-driven decisions that can effectively propel your sustainability goals. It is a fruitless effort to conduct costly and time-consuming procedures to collect sustainability data for business activities and reporting processes when the data is not accurate enough to fully back up claims or yield actionable results. 

About WatchWire

Check out our comprehensive guide to understanding sustainability goal tracking here:

WatchWire is a market-leading sustainability and energy data management platform that uses cloud-based software to collect, automize, and analyze utility, energy, and sustainability data metrics. WatchWire streamlines, automates, and standardizes your sustainability reporting process by integrating directly and/or providing reporting exports to ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, LEED Arc, GRESB, CDP, SASB, GRI, and more. The platform provides customizable dashboards, which allow asset managers, sustainability managers, engineers, and more to monitor individual key performance indicators (KPIs) and create custom views for specific use cases. WatchWire provides:

• Automatic collection of energy, utility, sustainability, and emissions data through real-time metering. The data is then fully audited and organized in one place
• GHG emissions tracking
• Goal tracking (e.g., Net Zero, SBTi, waste diversion)
• Carbon offset view of power purchases from the grid vs. on-site renewables generated vs. off-site RECs.
• Opportunities to implement projects (track EEMs) and monitor distributed energy resource production (e.g. on-site solar)

To discover more about WatchWire and its capabilities, you can visit our website, blog, or resource library, request a demo, or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter to keep up-to-date on the latest energy and sustainability insights, news, and resources.